The invention relates generally to deformable foam curlers which have a foam body and a formative pliable core, and more particularly, to a method for making foam curlers in which the formative pliable core is inserted into the foam body.
Conventional deformable foam curlers are made up of a cylindrically shaped plastic foam body and a wire core. Because foam curlers are easy to handle and offer a pleasant feeling to one who is wearing them, foam curlers have a well established place in the field of hair care equipment. Deformable foam curlers are, for example disclosed in West German Patent Document No. DE-OS 34 672. For their manufacture, a plastic body is poured into a respective mold, into which a wire core was previously inserted, whereby the plastic material is welded and sealed together with the material of the wire core. This manufacturing procedure is relatively costly since it requires a closed mold which must be constructed in a way to insure that the wire core remains fixed in a predetermined position during the pouring process.
Another type of soft foam curler and a method for its manufacture is disclosed in West German Patent Document No. DE-OS 33 46 164. A synthetic foam material body is produced in continuous length form together with an inserted wire also of continuous length. The foam rubber is produced by a direct fumigating process with physical fuels. After its production, the continuous foam and wire length is cut into separate curler length pieces and worked on at the cut ends to insure that the wire insert does not protrude from the cut ends. To avoid the danger of injury, the foamed-in wire ends must be shortened or bent, which leads to an increased stress on the plastic material and thereby to a pre-programmed destruction of the foam curler. Furthermore, the finishing work on the foam curler is costly, since material already used must be removed which leads to unnecessary waste.
Another conventional way of producing foam curlers is to punch out cylindrical bodies from plastic material plates of a thickness corresponding to the length of the finished curlers and provide the cylindrical bodies with a wire insert. This production process leads, in most synthetic foam materials used for these products, to an open-pore surface of the plastic body, since during the punching-out process the foam bubbles are destroyed. Furthermore, material waste is incurred during the punching-out process, increasing the costs of material and production.
All of the above described conventional deformable foam curlers have the disadvantage that when used to curl a persons wet hair, the rolled-up hair dries very slowly. Either the plastic body is not absorbent and has a smooth surface, in which instance the hair can, because of reduced air circulation, only dry slowly, since any moisture is removed only on the side away from the curlers, or the foam curlers have an open-pore type surface which soaks up the water, whereby the soaked up water must evaporate before the hair is dried in a satisfactory manner.